Letter to a Young Poet

December 11th, 2014

Two years, three months, and a dozen days or so ago as of this writing.

That's when I submitted "Tamas" to McSweeney's Quarterly Concern. A magazine which is quite friendly to nobody writers like me. Keep that in mind, Young Poet.

And last night this morning I got three emails from them.


#1: 10:05 pm

Hello,

My name is Kristina Kearns and I am writing you as the new Executive Director at McSweeney's.

I know it's been quite some time since you've received word from us about your Quarterly submission, and I want to apologize for that. Our staff is quite small and the Quarterly was on a long (too long!) hiatus.

I am excited to announce that we sent our 49th issue to press and subscribers will receive their copy in the next six weeks.

We'll also reopen our submissions very, very soon!

Please note that you will soon receive a rejection notice for your former submission. We highly encourage you to resubmit in April if you are still interested.

Please do expect a wait time of 4-6 weeks while we get back up to speed.

Thank you so much for your interest in McSweeney's! I hope to hear more from you soon.

With kind regards,


#2: 10:25 pm

Hello again,

Because so many have already asked, please allow me to clarify:

The impending rejection is merely an administrative necessity to re-open submissions and allow those still interested to submit again (or submit a newer piece) in April. It is in no way an indication of merit or interest in the piece. I do apologize if that was unclear.

Please feel free to ask more questions. We're deeply interested in reading your work!

Hope this helps,
Kristina


#3: 10:48 pm

Hello! Hopefully you've received two previous emails from our new Executive Director regarding this administrative-only rejection.

We are happy to announce that the Quarterly is back after a very long hiatus, and submissions will reopen in April.

Due to the extended period time since you've submitted, we are clearing the deck and encouraging you to submit this piece again (or another piece if you prefer).

Submission readings will begin in mid-April and it may take 4-6 weeks to receive a response. Our apologies in advance - we're only four people!

Ever yours,
the McSweeney's crew


Now, I realize it was stupid of me to think that the long wait was a good sign. (Although I did email somewhere around the one year mark to politely inquire about my manuscript, and received a response which was not negative.) But that's what I did. And hope did bloom in my nitrogen-starved heart's soil. So when I saw the address of the email last night, my first thought was that my manuscript had been accepted, and elation ran through me like an electric shock. For about one second. Then I opened the email and read message #1. And as if that didn't sting quite enough, a little later on came message #2. Talk about pouring salt into a wound. You'd think that someone at the helm of a literary magazine would be a little more skilled at using her words.

So fuck it. I was depressed enough after my novel A Matter of Reason didn't make the cut for the Sarabande Kentucky Writers contest. But this feels like the end of the line to me so far as submitting work to a publisher goes. It's just too humiliating. 

It also makes me remember a writing seminar I attended at Catonsville Community College in late 1979 or early 1980. One of the speakers told a story about a young writer asking him (the speaker might have been a her, come to think of it, but I'm not at all sure), "When do you know that it's time to give up?" And at the time I thought, "What a pussy! You never give up! No retreat, no surrender! Whoo-ah!"

But now . . . not so much. Also, there are avenues by which to publish your work that don't depend upon someone else approving of it. Blogs, for instance. Amazon Kindle Publishing. Other things of like ilk. So the second thing I'm going to do after I stop writing this is put "Tamas" up on Kindle Publishing, and let it join my aforementioned novel and a short story I put up a long time ago: 










The first thing I'm going to do is feel shitty for awhile.

You've got to have a thick skin to be a writer, Young Poet. Alas, I have virtually no skin at all. If the same is true of you, then please take my advice: get someone else to handle the job of submitting your manuscripts. You just need to worry about the writing.